


This is the Place I Wanted to Come Back To

by TheChronic



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Aged-Up Number Five | The Boy, Gen, Good Sibling Number Five | The Boy, Good Sibling Vanya Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy Has Issues, Time Travel, Timeline What Timeline, Umbrella Academy - Freeform, Umbrella Academy Time Travel, drinking whisky in front of the fire in the library and discussing stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:08:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28736250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheChronic/pseuds/TheChronic
Summary: “Wait wait... you jumped forwards in time three times in short succession but it took you fifty years to travel backwards?”
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 2
Kudos: 56





	This is the Place I Wanted to Come Back To

**Author's Note:**

> Speculative discussion between Five and Vanya - since she seems to be the only person he has any patience to discuss things with - about why time travel is so messy for him. Not entirely convinced, tbh, that Five isn't responsible for the various ends of the world... but that's a theory for another time. 
> 
> Addressing some thinky thoughts I have about the series and indulging myself. Please comment if you like - I'm really interested in other people's ideas re. time travel!

“Wait wait... you jumped _forwards_ in time three times in short succession but it took you fifty years to travel _backwards_?”

He rolled his eyes and huffed a sigh through his nose, tipped a slug of whisky into his mouth. A critical, sideways glance followed. She sprang out of the armchair she had been lounging in, suddenly animated by the question that had formed in her mind. “Listen, I know you think the rest of us are idiots but...”

“I don’t think that,” he mumbled into his glass.

“Um, yes, you do.” She swept the thought away with her hand. “I am, relatively speaking, at this moment in time, as clueless about time travel as you were when you first attempted it. And you got lost in doing so. And I don’t have – as you do – any kind of intuitive understanding of the process. I’m at a disadvantage here. So you’ll have to explain. And keep explaining, in simpler and simpler terms until I understand even if that means stickmen scribbled on paper. How is it that you knew how to jump forwards but not how to jump backwards?”

“Do you _need_ to understand how it works?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it matters.”

“Why?”

She paused and chewed her lip introspectively. “Because I want to know what happened to you.”

“I’ve told this story before.”

“That was out of necessity. We’re talking about your actual experience… the details.”

He gave a sarcastic laugh, rolled his eyes at her directly this time. “Details? It really wasn’t that exciting.”

“Details. Inflection. Body language. They show which bits of the story matter to _you_. Last time you spoke about this it was brief. Factual. Two-dimensional. You’re a… four-dimensional kinda guy.”

His snort of laugher was genuine this time. He looked up at her with a shadow of respect in his eyes and relented. “Moving forwards is easier. Natural. It’s the direction that your body _wants_ to travel in. Travelling backwards is unnatural, not the direction that your body is evolved to move in. Since we are all bound by the same physical laws – more or less – going in the prescribed direction is easy. Instinctive. Going against the prescribed direction is like... trying to grow younger. Or eat backwards.”

She wrinkled her nose as she thought about it. “Like vomiting?”

“That’s purging. I’m talking about shoving your food up your ass and shitting out of your mouth.”

She couldn’t help but laugh out loud; gave him a sly, amused look as she brought her face back under control.

“Is that a thing you can actually do Five? Remind me to never to kiss you on the lips.”

His eyebrows shot up; she giggled but cut off his reply as his mouth began to form his habitual, scathing reply. “So you have an intuitive understanding of time travel, but it flows more easily in one direction than the other. To go forwards – the direction your body expects to travel in - all you need to do was attempt it, but trying to come backwards through the same time you got stuck, and needed some incredibly complicated math to achieve it. Right?”

“I mean…” he looked to the ceiling as he struggled for words. “Sort of.”

“You do know that eating backwards is impossible, right? Unlike travelling backwards through time.”

“It’s a different skill. Like you using your powers to explode something right in front of you, and using them to pinpoint and explode something specific halfway around the world. Technically possible, blindingly difficult.”

“I mean, personally I would just catch a plane…”

“Very funny.”

She offered a half smile, then turned back to the fire. “The Commission can clearly travel through time at will with their briefcases. But it’s messy, for you.”

He let out a long sigh, and reached for the decanter on the low table between them. The firelight sparkled on the glass facets as he topped up his own glass and tipped the decanter towards her, offering a top up. She shook her head, but picked up her own glass, still half full, and cradled it against her chest.

“That’s a little unkind, Vanya. The Commission has a bevy of metaphysicists and mathematicians – not to mention a budget - to work on these problems. I only had my brain, my skin, and a few Twinkies, all past their sell-by date.”

She ignored him. He was old enough to know better than to expect her to pander towards his intellect. She looked over at him sharply. “Did you ever ask them? How to do it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It would have seemed a little suspicious, don’t you think?”

“Only from your perspective. If you gave them no reason to suspect you were trying to get back here, then it would have been pretty reasonable. Given your skillset.”

“You don’t have the paranoid mindset required to work at the Commission. Besides, my curiosity was reason enough for them to keep me out of there.”

“Hmm. Maybe…” They fell back into silence for a minute or two. She stared at the fire, oblivious to him, staring at her. “When was the last time you travelled forward, on your own?”

“Without a briefcase?”

“Yes.”

“When I got lost in apocalypse.”

“Why?”

“I’d have to come back again to reach the present I had come from and – as I have just explained – that isn’t easy to do.”

“But why didn’t you just keep jumping forwards, once you realised you couldn’t come back?”

His brow furrowed, and he thought for a moment. “I wanted to come back.”

“You paid a very heavy price for that.”

“I thought about it. Who knows what I would have found if I had just kept jumping forwards and forwards – the resurgence of mankind, another species coming to dominance, the end of the world, the end of the universe? But I wouldn’t have ended up _here_.” He shook his head, emptied his glass again, placed it back on the table.

“This is the place I wanted to come back to.”


End file.
